Child Maintenance Service
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the average and maximum response times are for the Child Maintenance Service providing parents with full statements and breakdowns of maintenance calculations and variations on request.
Answered by Andrew Western
The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) remains committed to providing timely, transparent, and accurate information to parents.
Parents can access full statements at any time via the Child Maintenance Self Service portal, My Child Maintenance Case (MCMC), which is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They do not need to request this from the CMS, as an online statement is always available.
When CMS recalculates maintenance due to a change in circumstances or a variation, we are legally required to notify both parents in writing. These letters, which include a detailed breakdown of the calculation, are also available online via MCMC.
Where a parent disputes their arrears balance, they can request a full account breakdown. This is a manual process. CMS does not systematically record the time taken to complete these requests, so the data requested is not available.
All calculation decisions can be challenged through the Mandatory Reconsideration (MR) process, which allows a parent to ask CMS to review a decision before appealing to His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service. During MR, CMS re-examines the decision and considers any new information provided. If the original decision is found to be incorrect, it will be revised.
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